Background

The continued growth and consolidation of surveillance capitalist "tech giants" is unsustainable and dangerous. In addition to identifying alternatives to their services, we can find out more about what non-scaling orgs (small businesses, non-profits, cooperatives, co-ops, and local government groups) really need from technology.

Hypothesis

The technologies, interviewing processes, and training methodologies for software often revolve around a concept of "scaling" that can be any of the following:

• Factual (for already very large companies)
• Aspirational (for startups)
• Aesthetic (to attract talent or otherwise fit in)

If the technical side of what is considered the "tech" industry optimizes us to a prosperity gospel which bases salvation on our proximity to big companies, then (among other problems) we're missing out on beneficial and interesting work. In organizations without the "rocketship" growth mentality, an obsession with scaling should be similarly absent.

As a first step, I'm gathering more info on how these orgs use technology now. What I'm hoping for is that with a few organizations profiled, I can help steer programmers towards necessary and less destructive work while helping orgs that really need it. More ambitiously, I'd like to identify any mismatches between the types of skills developed in CS programs, bootcamps, and self-study versus what is needed by world-bettering orgs. It's possible that from education to interviews to conferences to tool choices, we've optimized towards monopolies. I personally suspect that this is the case, but I want to let the organizations speak for themselves.

About the Survey

I'm happy to have this conversation over the phone if you want to save yourself some typing. Just reach out to me at evan@novc.org and we can set up some time to talk. Otherwise, the survey is below.